Highlights from the Mushroom Research Centre workshop on Northern Thailand diversity (July 28- August 2)

Most days of the workshop consisted of a collection foray to a local forest in the morning, and an evening in the lab. Many participants were collecting for a specific project, but I took the workshop as an opportunity to hike, work on my mushroom photography, learn how to morphologically identify more mushrooms to genus, and ask other participants about their work. More pictures are on my Flickr photostream (on the right bar of the blog).

Eske and Kadri in their natural habitat.

This Cookeina sp. was particularly large and impressive. This genus is often called "eyelash cup fungus" for obvious reasons.

Thailand has a high diversity and abundance of Ophiocordyceps s.l. species. These fungi parasitize various insects and arachnids and fruit spectacularly from their corpses. The one pictured is probably O. nutans.

Some sort of coralline fungus (Calocera ?) appearing through the leaf litter.

The exoskeleton of a cicada, shed on the underside of an old polypore fungus. When I found it, there was an ant crawling across the mold growing on the exoskeleton left on a fungus, which was also growing mold. Peculiar interactions.

Termitomyces sp. for sale at a roadside stand. This genus is distinctive-- the pointed cone on top is quite solid and often coated in dirt, evidence of how they have to push their way through the packed soil of a termite mound. This genus is named for its obligate symbiotic relationship with termites, which "farm" fungal mycelium. The mushroom fruits from the cultivated mass in an underground termite colony. They are widely eaten and command a relatively high price.

This bolete is being parasitised by another fungus.

This species typically fruits from pine cones.

A typical collection box containing small or fragile specimens. Larger collections are wrapped in tin foil and placed in a basket.

One of my favorite shots of very small fruiting bodies of some sort (Xylariaceae?) that had almost completely covered a large log.

Eske takes pictures with intensity for her taxonomic work on Lactifluus/Lactarius.

A beautiful Amanita. The cap was covered in fragile, powdery "warts" that crumbled at the lightest touch.

A very unusual bolete.

One day, these dogs followed us from start to finish.

The view from one of the day's hikes.

These were very small but striking.

A milk cap exuding "milk/latex" from a small cut.

A member of the genus Phallus.

The only picture of me from the field, with backpack, camera bag, collection box, and anti-mosquito jacket. Thanks Henri for taking it.

Beautiful fungus - Panellus sp.

"Bruising" response of a bolete

Taken by Alvin Tang-- group picture of most of us.

Bamboo forest.

Accent color of Wat Phalat, on the Pilgrim's Trail to Doi Suthep

Mushrooms in my second day of Thai food

I'm not in the habit of taking pictures of meals and it's not something I'm skilled at, but it seemed appropriate given the circumstances.

Straw mushrooms (Volvariella volvacea) in a soup that cleared my sinuses and led to the bottom of my 2nd (of 5) liter of water

Enokitake (Flammulina velutipes) wrapped in bacon, and grilled king oyster (Pleurotus eryngii). This stall at an open-air market also had steamed oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus spp.-- these oysters had morphological differences including a narrower base compared to the ones I'm most familiar with, which may be a result from different growing conditions, or they may be a different species than P. ostreatus, hence the "spp."). I was considering trying to ask them where they buy them, but they were doing pretty swift business. Maybe next time.  All varieties they were selling are commonly commercially cultivated anyway, so there probably wasn't much info to glean.

Interesting note about enokitake: they are grown in particular controlled conditions (likely no light, maybe controlled CO2) that make their appearance vastly different from wild individuals of the same species. If you google the species name, you'll find very little resemblance between cultivated and wild specimens.